Union may not have been quite the simple good old cause
that proponents of the new Constitution made it out to be.
But however separate and distinct the American colonies
were in their foundations, temper, and internal self-government,
they had shared a long history under a common
imperial authority. For over a century and a half that
central authority in Britain had set policy on war and
peace, commerce, westward expansion, and the like.
Hence the crisis that issued in a revolutionary declaration
of independence not only involved colonial resistance to
an old central authority, but also almost necessarily entailed
the burden of creating a new continental authority.
In that concrete sense the problems of union were rooted
deep in the colonial past, in the nature of the British empire,
and in the central conflicts of the Revolution. So
while many abstractions figured in the debate over union,
they were abstractions grounded in persistent historical
and geographical facts.

The first halting efforts by Americans to make "out of
many, one" were beset by much the same difficulties and
considerations that vexed the United States down to the
eve of civil war. Union, indispensable for the survival of
the parts, threatened to engulf and devour them. The
considerations of self-preservation and political effectiveness
that argued for a union of all the colonies or states
militated by the same token against a partial union or several
confederacies; yet the heterogeneity of the colonies or
states made some less comprehensive grouping appear the
surer and safer project. Further, in seeking as they did a
union that would legislate for its parts, the Americans resigned
themselves to the kind of tension that attends complex
solutions. Theirs was to be neither alliance nor amalgam.
The parts as parts would continue; but the parts
would not and could not be more than parts of a greater
whole.

One great constitutional manifestation of this effort to
combine goals that do not sit easily together will be examined
in ch. 8 under the heading Federal v. Consolidated
Government. But that formulation already presupposes
some kind of union, and it is with that first step that one
leaves the world of simple solutions and simple troubles.

The tentative early proposals of the Albany Commissioners
(no. 1) for a union with certain limited but significant
purposes and powers of legislation already contain [Volume 1, Page 208]
the germ of much that was to follow. Franklin's explanatory
"reasons and motives" (no. 2) lay bare the inherent
difficulties, complicated by the need to accommodate the
great third party, the imperial government, through its
crown representative. Though the plan tries to avoid uncertainty
and controversy by eschewing any legislative prerogatives
beyond "such only as shall be necessary" for
enumerated purposes, and denies any intention that the
general government "interfere with the constitution and
government of the particular colonies," it nevertheless
leaves unsettled the boundary between the general and
particular governments. In truth, the subject admits of no
mathematical exactness or finality. Patrick Henry, ever
wary and sniffing consolidation from a distance, accordingly
could later trace the Americans' success in resisting
British tyranny to the failure of the Albany plan: American
liberty had flourished in the absence of concentered
governmental strength and energy (see Elliot 3:172--73).
Therein, he thought, lay a great cautionary lesson.

With growing colonial protest and resistance to intrusive
central authority, Americans were led to create their own
institutions for common action. And as independence became
their more or less openly avowed object, they were
led to give their ad hoc union constitutional form. The
tension between the whole and parts persists in Franklin's
21 July 1775 draft of the Articles of Confederation (see
Journals 2:195--99). Under that plan Congress may "Make
such General Ordinances as tho' necessary to the General
Welfare, particular Assemblies cannot be competent to,"
yet at the same time each of "The United Colonies of North
America" continues to "enjoy and retain as much as it may
think fit of its own present Laws, Customs, Rights, Privileges,
and peculiar Jurisdictions within its own Limits."
The proposal moves a long way toward national union by
permitting the delegates to vote as individuals rather than
as a single colonial delegation; in this sense it partakes less
of the character of a mere league than either John Dickinson's
subsequent draft of 12 July 1776 (see Journals
5:546--54) or the final version of the Articles of Confederation
(see ch. 1, no. 7).

Most or all adherents of the revolutionary cause understood,
at some level, that henceforth they were no longer
simply Virginians or New Yorkers, but Americans. The
Continental Congress's letter transmitting the proposed
Articles to the state legislatures for ratification (no. 4) drew
upon this awareness even while trying desperately to augment
it. Stressing simultaneously the many elements that
divided the Americans and the considerations that made
those diverse folk "brethren and fellow-citizens," Congress
seemed to be confessing in one breath the greatness of the
task and the modesty of their proffered means. As the
event proved, their urgent appeal to feelings of union was
neither superfluous nor especially effective: the Articles
finally were ratified only after a delay of more than three
years and only after one of those divisive elements (conflicting
state claims to Western lands) had been resolved.

The shortcomings of the Articles were widely remarked
on, not least by those who came to be called Anti-Federalists.
But those deficiencies did not point ineluctably
to a single remedy. Here lies the core of the debate over
the Constitution, for not all could accept the explicit premise
of those who agitated for a change and led the fight
for the Constitution's ratification: that "a more perfect
Union" required a government differently constituted
(nos. 5, 6). Even among some later self-styled Federalists it
was a question whether union on republican principles was
possible, whether general laws, equitable to all, were within
the reach of a legislature elected by a highly diverse people.
Perhaps a more perfect union might better be approached
through disunion, followed by reunion of the
more neighborly and kindred states (Rush, no. 7; see also
Benjamin Lincoln to Rufus King, 11 Feb. 1786, and J. T.
Main, The Antifederalists: Critics of the Constitution 283--84
[1961]). Madison would soon rebut this misgiving by turning
it on its head. Union on republican principles is not
only possible but essential to a just and lasting republic (see
ch. 4, no. 22). As for the Anti-Federalists, a more perfect
union on national grounds threatened rather to suffocate
the states or reduce them to nonentities (see ch. 8). In the
extreme case, a most thoughtful Anti-Federalist was prepared
to accept division as the lesser evil (Centinel, no. 18).
A more moderate alternative would be to recognize the
diversity of state interests in the very structure of government.
But here again there were deep differences. Madison
relied on the competition of interests both within and
outside the national legislature (see ch. 4, no. 19, and ch.
10, no. 16), anticipating that heterogeneity among and
within the states would temper political extremes and
make for a firmer union. Similarly, Hamilton sought to
show how the very diversity of circumstances in the country
might promote a useful economic complementarity
(no. 23). The Impartial Examiner (27 Feb. 1788), in contrast,
thought to reconcile or unite those interests by accommodating
the states in the critical respect--by leaving
the power of the purse in their several hands.

With suggestions such as this latter being bruited about,
Publius held it far from "superfluous to offer arguments
to prove the utility of the Union" (no. 9). The "proof"
consisted, as is characteristic of the Federalist Papers, in an
adroit appeal to fears and hopes, to calculation and sentiment.
It was either union on the terms of the proposed
Constitution, or "dismemberment" of the already existing
union. (See also C. C. Pinckney, no. 19; Jay, no. 22.) Union
was the old cause, the source of much of the greatness that
America already had achieved (see ch. 4, no. 22). Those
who advocated, or failed to forfend, separation were the
true innovators and would unwittingly deprive America of
its due influence for good in the world. Their heedlessness
might have even more perilous consequences, for they
seemed oblivious of a lesson attested by "the accumulated
experience of ages": fences make bad neighbors. Wars
were not merely a royal disease; and commerce, far from
pacifying men, had only changed the objects of war. In
this sense America was like unto all the nations. But more
particularly (Hamilton went on with obvious relish), America
fairly bristled with peculiar circumstances that made
even more likely its becoming a bloody theater for hostile
pretensions and legitimately differing interests. Unless,
that is, an effective superintending power could hold all
these in check (nos. 10, 11).

[Volume 1, Page 209]

Beyond these urgent concerns lay another case for
union, at once self-serving and philanthropic. Union was
the precondition for America's becoming a nation, forming
a national character "adapted to the principles and genius
of our system of government" (Wilson, no. 17). Union
under the Constitution promised to help "diffuse those
generous federal sentiments, without which, we never can
be a happy and flourishing people." As used here by A
[Massachusetts] Federalist, "federal" is contrasted with the
crabbed, parochial sentiments fostered by the existing state
constitutions (no. 16). A united America would somehow
be greater and finer than the sum of its parts.

Again, one man's dream was another's nightmare. A
firmer union might open the way to America's becoming a
great nation whose growing territory, population, resources,
and wealth would enable it to exert its power--and
the power of republican example for the world. Alternatively,
a firmer union might tempt a people to a career
of national splendor, glory, and domination at the sacrifice
of liberty and quiet domestic happiness. (See chs. 8 and 9.)

Such promises or anticipations bent under the weight of
earthier concerns. When a state or region felt its interests
slighted or threatened, its rightful influence waning or denied,
its very necessities jeopardized, visions of a grand
collective future were small solace. These resentments and
alarms were given voice in turn by each of the great parts
out of which union was so painfully being formed: the
Mississippi Valley (George Nicholas to James Madison, 31
Dec. 1790), New England (Pickering, no. 24), and the
South. The last, being the keenest and most fearsome
challenge to the principles of union, elicited the most profound
restatements of the Founders' understanding of
what they had wrought. (See also James Madison to Edward
Everett, 28 Aug. 1830; and Joseph Story, Commentaries
on the Constitution of the United States 1:§§ 321--40, 361--72
[1833].) "The happy Union of the States" might indeed
be "a wonder; their Constn. a miracle" (as Madison exclaimed
in 1829), but the record of surviving documents
points unequivocally to the tireless efforts of politically
adroit men who knew what they wanted and why.